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Andrónico Luksic, 78, Magnate in Chile, Dies

Andrónico Luksic, a Chilean billionaire who built one of Latin America's biggest business empires, died Aug. 18 in Chile.

He was 78 years old. His death was reported by Antofagasta P.L.C., the company where he had served as chairman until his retirement last year.

Mr. Luksic once controlled a sprawling collection of mining, banking, telecommunications, manufacturing and beer companies. Most of the companies were in South America, but he also owned beach resorts in Croatia, the country his father had emigrated from in the early 1900's.

Mr. Luksic claimed his fortune was born from a misunderstanding. As a young man, he sold his stake in a copper mine to Japanese investors who thought he was quoting them a price in dollars when in fact the amount he had proposed was in pesos. Mr. Luksic was too embarrassed to point out the discrepancy, fearing that he would be considered a rube for asking so little.

"I thought for sure they would figure it out," he said in a 2002 interview with El Mercurio, the Chilean newspaper. But they did not, and the mistake meant that Mr. Luksic was paid $500,000, more than 10 times the money he had asked for.

Born on Nov. 5, 1926, Andrónico Luksic Abaroa grew up in Antofagasta, then a dusty desert town in northern Chile, where his father owned a general store. His parents were affluent enough to send their son to the Sorbonne in Paris. But his stint at the famed university was short-lived. On the first day of classes, his professor asked Mr. Luksic to stand up and give a brief, impromptu speech about his native Chile. The young man was so unbearably shy that he fled the room and never returned.

Back in Chile, Mr. Luksic studied law to please his parents. But his discomfort in publicly arguing court cases led him to renounce the law as a career. Through a relative, he acquired a Ford dealership in Antofagasta, which was becoming a boomtown because of copper mining in the surrounding Atacama Desert.

An amateur geologist who enjoyed long, lonely walks to collect ore samples, Mr. Luksic later bought a controlling share of a small copper mine whose owners were feuding. It was this mine that he sold in 1954 to the Nippon Mining Company for the unexpected windfall.

"I burned 20 packages of votary candles to my three favorite saints -- Pancras, Judas and Anthony," Mr. Luksic said. "Then I deposited the $500,000 in a bank as collateral to finance new businesses."

Over the next 16 years, Mr. Luksic expanded into fishing and mining, and moved to Santiago, the Chilean capital, where his successful stock market investments helped him gain control of Empresas Lucchetti S.A., a pasta maker, and Madeco S.A., a leading metal manufacturer.

A workaholic, Mr. Luksic discovered a novel way to combine business and family obligations. "When I came home from the office, I would jump into bed and have my five children and wife sit around me, and I would tell them everything I had done that day, in great detail," he said. "I soon realized that these talks were a way to help me figure out business problems."

Like many Chilean entrepreneurs, Mr. Luksic saw his fortunes suffer when President Salvador Allende, a democratically elected Marxist, took power in 1970 and carried out wholesale nationalizations. Eager to protect his most profitable businesses, Mr. Luksic agreed to sell other companies cheaply to the Allende government, much to the displeasure of the Chilean business community, which opposed any state takeovers. As a result, when General Augusto Pinochet came to power in 1973 coup, Mr. Luksic was barred from investing in the first wave of state-owned companies put up for auction.

But events soon moved in his favor. In the early 1980's, a financial crisis set off a recession and widespread bankruptcies in Chile. As one of the few Chilean businessmen with low debts and lots of money, Mr. Luksic was able to buy Banco de Santiago, a leading bank, and the brewery Cervecerias Unidas S.A., or CCU, at rock-bottom prices. Bought for $7 million, CCU eventually became worth more than $1 billion, making it one of the greatest investments in Latin American history.

"I never let successes go to my head, because I always knew there would setbacks down the road," said Mr. Luksic in a 1998 interview. Indeed, the Luksic family conglomerate, Quiñenco, struggled for a time in the late 1990's as investments in neighboring countries, such as Argentina, Peru and Brazil, were hit by severe economic crises. The family's banking interests also were hurt when a rival, Banco Santander of Spain, merged with another Spanish bank. But none of these setbacks proved fatal, thanks to Mr. Luksic's strategy of diversifying his investments and remaining cash-rich.

Until his retirement, Mr. Luksic continued to show up every day at his office in downtown Santiago. He entrusted his oldest son, also named Andrónico, to manage the family's banking interests, while his middle son, Guillermo, led the Quiñenco companies and his youngest son, Jean-Paul, ran the mining operations. His daughters, Paola and María Gabriela, oversaw the family's charitable foundations.

Besides his children, Mr. Luksic is survived by his second wife, Iris Fontbona.

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A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on August 29, 2005, on Page B00007 of the National edition with the headline: Andrónico Luksic, 78, Magnate in Chile. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe